Heroes Season 4, Episode 1 “Orientation”
In Arlington, VA Claire enters her dorm for the first time. She meets Annie, her new roommate, and they talk about Facebook. Claire is embarrassed that she got a GED, and Annie immediately gets all bitchy about how Claire only got into college because her Dad works for the government. Annie then unveils her “trajectory”, which is a collage laying out her future. Claire is surprised that Annie has a “map of (her) future”, which is a nice callback to Season One’s “Five Years Later”. Then Annie rips on Claire’s teddy bear. She’s kind of Paris from Gilmore Girls.
In Tokyo, Hiro and Ando offer a “Dial a Hero” service, though nobody is calling. Hiro is shocked, since “bar graphs don’t lie”. They reminisce over an old photo that includes Hiro’s sister, and Ando announces he still has a crush on her. (By the way, the picture was taken of them at a carnival, fourteen years ago. Our second carnival reference!) Enter Hiro’s sister, who thinks this is stupid and she’s tired of doing Hiro’s work for him. Hiro has to correct her when she calls their venture “Heroes for Hire”, which is funny, because that was what Power Man and Iron Fist called their business in the 80’s. Yep, nerd reference right there. The phone rings, and they are excited about a client.
In New York City, Peter Petrelli is a paramedic, riding shotgun in an ambulance. To avoid a traffic jam, he bails and runs through the alley, using what I assume are copied powers to pull off some Parkour moves. Remember how a week or two back, The Office was making fun of Michael for getting into Parkour five years after the fact? Well, he still beat Peter to it. Peter pulls the door off a wrecked car and announces he’s here to save the day.
Back at school, Claire and Annie are preparing for a placement test in Linear Algebra. The professor instructs them to solve a single problem, and then sits down with a product-placed copy of Pride and Prejudice with Zombies. Claire stares blankly at the board, and if they suddenly make her a math whiz after fours seasons, I’m punching somebody. There’s a quick dream sequence where a dude shoots her with a poison dart, then she comes to her senses and leaves.
In the hospital, Peter finds out that the pregnant woman he rescued is doing fine and gave birth to twins. I’m distracted because the credits include Zeljko Ivanek, who is awesome and was really good as Danko last season. Anyway, Peter’s partner isn’t sure why Pete isn’t more excited about saving all those lives. Apparently Peter’s upset that if he’d taken longer to get there, he wouldn’t have saved them. Yep, Whiny Peter is back. He’s whining that the possibility of failure once existed in something that’s over an done with. Cripes. Is he going to grow back his Season One hair, too?
In Tokyo, it turns out that Hiro and Ando have been hired by a little girl to get her cat off of a raised platform. This is not something that lightning powers will help with, so Ando has to shinny up a drainpipe. Of course the cat bites him and they fall. Hiro freezes time at the last second. Hey, aren’t his powers killing him? Don’t tell me they forgot that plotline?
In Washingtom DC, Bennet gets a call from Rose Petrelli. She explains that Tracy, who was turned to ice and destroyed last season, is killing the people who worked for Danko. Bennet heads to his car and sees the paper announces a “Fourth Mysterious Drowning”. Water pours through the vents in Bennet’s car, and it quickly fills up. Luckily, somebody shoots out the window – it’s Danko!
OK, here’s the thing. We saw at the end of last season that Tracy was responsible for the drownings. Or somebody who looks like Tracy – there is still that unseen third sister out there. Bennet and Danko talk about it and reason that she reconstituted herself when the ice melted after Danko shot her, which probably changed her powers. But the first drowning happened before Tracy was shattered and only shortly after she learned that she had any powers at all. I call shenanigans! If this doesn’t turn out to be Barbara instead of Tracy, they’ve made a dog’s breakfast of their timeline.
Anyway, Danko asks Bennet for help in taking down Tracy, but Bennet doesn’t trust him anymore. Bennet announces that he’s starting over, which Danko thinks is impossible. They go their separate ways with a sideways glance at one another.
At college, Claire strikes up a conversation with Gretchen, a dark-haired girl who claims to be a former teenager. She’s also from Texas, and she’s heard about the homecoming murder from Season One. They kind of bond. Gretchen is supposed to be pretty, but she has awful diction and what appears to be the Family Guy’s chin. Yeah, I went there.
In Japan, Hiro lowers Ando to the ground and unfreezes time. Wouldn’t he maintain his momentum though? Like, he’s moving at the same speed he was before Hiro froze time, so moving him to the ground just means he’s going to splat that much sooner, right? Am I overthinking this? The little girl is happy that they saved her cat, and promises to tell her friends. They notice that Hiro is completely motionless. It’s like he’s frozen in time himself.
Nathan meets Rose for sushi, only he’s Sylar. Rose then wakes up. At the sushi restaurant, the scene plays out exactly the way she dreamed it, only Nathan looks like Nathan. (We really need a good name for Sylar / Nathan now. First one to come up with a nickname gets a prize! And by “prize”, I mean “my gratitude”.) Nathan asks his mother if he likes sushi. Ah, so there are still some blanks in his psychic landscape. He also admits that he feels out of touch with his own life. He says he’s going to be better and to reconnect with the important people in his life. Rose tries to write it off as a mid-life crisis.
In LA, Matt is hanging out with Baby Matt. Rose calls – she’s worried that Sylar is emerging again. Matt is mad that she called him, but she wants him to purge Sylar’s memories again. Matt says he doesn’t use his powers anymore, and since that day, he’s been seeing things.
In Nathan’s office, he accidentally uses Sylar’s telekinesis to move a coffee mug and freaks out. Then he uses Elle’s electric powers. Man, Matt is really bad and turning people into other people.
Claire returns to her dorm to find her father chatting with Annie. Annie excuses herself after inviting them to come play Guitar Hero III at the mixer. Man, I love Guitar Hero. Claire tells Bennet that she was recognized, but that she’s glad she’s herself again. They seem to like each other again, which is definite progress.
At the Sullivan Bros. Carnival, the Tattooed Lady (and yes, her name is Lydia) goes to T-Bagg’s tent. He says “show me who he is”, and she rearranges her tattoos to show Danko’s face. That’s a pretty cool power, but if you never got tattooed, you’d never know you had it. I might have that power! Another guy comes in and addresses T-Bagg as “Samuel”, so we finally have a name. The guy, Edgar, asks if Samuel can’t send somebody else this time. Samuel explains that while redemption is all well and good, he’s in the vengeance game at the moment. They argue, and Samuel puts tattoo ink on Edgar’s hand, which moves up his arm and then appears as a hand around his throat. So was he using his telekinesis to use ink as a weapon? If so, that’s pretty badass. Edgar finally agrees to do the dirty work.
Bennet’s at another sushi restaurant and Tracy approaches him. She explains how she pulled herself back together, but not how she managed to kill that one guy using her new powers before she even had them. Bennet offers to help her, out of guilt. Tracy rejects the offer and storms out. Next, he meets up with Danko, to convince him that he leave Tracy alone. He actually gives him an envelope full of money to change his mind, but Danko won’t play along. And then, the Haitian pops up and puts his hand on Danko’s head. Hey, that’s a good use of the Haitian!
Nathan calls Peter, a little bit frantic. He needs Peter to explain what’s happening to him, but Peter lets it go to voicemail. We see a shot of Peter’s bulletin board, where he keeps newspaper clippings of all his rescues. There are a lot of them – clearly Peter’s made the news at least once a day in the six weeks since last season ended.
Danko gets back to his apartment, and Tracy follows him. He honestly doesn’t recognize her anymore, and she realizes that Bennet made her forget. “It’s not worth it”, she says, and leaves. She hears something as she leaves – apparently Edgar was also waiting for him, and she returns just in time to see him carve up Danko. He attacks her next, but stabbing doesn’t work when somebody’s made of water. She freezes his hand and he runs off.
At the college mixer, Claire runs into Gretchen. And then, because I’m watching this on freaking G4, suddenly viewer polls and Heroes trivia pop up on the screen. Oh, this won’t be annoying at all, I bet. The two of them play a game of Guitar Hero III, and the song we hear is “Superstitious”, which is totally not in that game.
Ando wheels a still-frozen Hiro back into the office using a handcart. Finally, he shakes him awake, but Hiro doesn’t remember anything and has a nosebleed. Hiro reveals that he’s seen a doctor, and that he’s dying. Wait, what? I don’t care for that one bit. He explains that at that carnival 14 years ago, the fortuneteller told him he would be a powerful hero. I’m not clear on why he says it all started at that moment, but Hiro logic is often hard to grasp. Hiro disappears in mid-sentence and finds himself back at the carnival. In the present, Hiro’s face appears on Lydia’s back. She says he was at the carnival 14 years ago. Wait, same carnival? Do traveling carnivals make stops in Tokyo? Samuel goes out to talk to an old man who’s breathing through a tube. He asks the old man to send him back 14 years, so he can fix everything.
Claire returns to her room and complains that Annie left the window open. She looks out and sees Annie lying on the cement below in a pool of blood. In less traumatizing news, Matt steps on a toy car. Nathan looks angry in his office. Matt can’t find Baby Matt, and then he sees Sylar in the corner, holding the baby and demanding his body back.
OK, that’s the first hour. Since this is long already, I’ll get the next hour later this week, as well as this week’s new episode. We’ll be caught up by Friday, I assure you.
